The Anti-Defamation League will present a “stand-up assembly” at Oak Park High School and invite a Holocaust survivor to address students, after anti-Semitic and racist tweets by six underclassmen surfaced last week, Principal Kevin Buchanan said.

The six students involved were disciplined for causing pain and disruption to the campus in the affluent Ventura County hillside community. Two of the teens “are no longer at the school,” but Buchanan would not disclose whether they were expelled. The four who remain at the school have agreed to after-school sensitivity training, he said, noting that the other two have also expressed interest.

“We responded swiftly and decisively and handed out discipline to all these students — including suspensions,” Buchanan said. “All the students have apologized, agreed to attend sensitivity training on campus by the (Anti-Defamation League). We have a schoolwide assembly on May 28 with a Holocaust survivor … Hopefully, there are lessons to be learned from this, and students can learn and grow from this.”

The ADL’s Tri-Counties office will be inviting Holocaust survivor and civil rights activist Judith Meisel to the assembly and is hoping her schedule permits her to attend, said Cyndi Silverman, ADL regional director for the three counties of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura.

“You’re going to have people that do things like that — that are going to be racist — but really the impetus is on the students to stand up and say no, this is unacceptable,” Silverman said.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department is currently investigating the case to determine whether any of the students’ actions meet the elements of criminal behavior, Detective Tim Lohman said. While freedom of speech is protected, “if the threats are to a specific person, we can look into that as (having) a criminal aspect.”

Among the tweets were the following: “Young Nazis move that gas,” “Gassing is life #heil” and “the ch*** (ethnic slur used to refer to Asians) at the donut shop tried to rip me off.” The tweets, which have since been removed, had nearly 300 retweets and garnered more than 350 favorites from Twitter users, according to the ADL.

One post said, “Hitler was a major disappointment. I was taught to finish what I start lol. He did not finish the job,” according to the Thousand Oaks Acorn newspaper.

The “offensive, hurtful and inappropriate,” tweets came to the attention of the school after an anonymous email was sent to administrators and many parents and community members last week and was quickly forwarded, Buchanan said, adding the posts were sent out by freshmen and sophomores, at least some of whom were football players and cheerleaders.

The incident brought some students, staff and parents to tears, with some parents keeping their kids home because they were so bothered.

“I wish this had been brought to my attention in a more appropriate manner,” Buchanan said. “The suggestion we wouldn’t have dealt with this was really upsetting.”

The school handled the incident “quickly and effectively,” said Silverman. Like other schools in these counties, Oak Park High School has participated for a number of years in the agency’s “No Place for Hate” program, which seeks to enhance appreciation for diversity and provides a model to prevent and respond to acts of hatred.

“It was a school where we were surprised to see something like this,” Silverman said. “For the most part, the school is a wonderful group of kids where they accept and embrace each other.”

These offensive tweets were sent in April — around Hitler’s birthday — though Silverman acknowledged the school had an incident a few months ago in which a male student called a female Jewish student a derogatory term that’s an ethnic slur.

That perpetrator was also involved in the recent anti-Semitic tweets and was disciplined for both incidents, Buchanan said, declining to state whether that boy was among the two students no longer at the school.

Senior Kyra Stevens, a peer counselor and a Safe School Ambassador, said Oak Park is a small community with a lot of heart and that everyone was affected by the incident in some way. At a school forum organized by students Friday to discuss the incident, she urged students to take responsibility for their actions.

“We need to make a change to the way we joke about things ­— the way we talk,” she said, referring to adolescents in general. “We’re very loose in our speech.”

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

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